[Propertalk] Article 1 - 'SALTED WITH FIRE' (MARK 9.42-50): STYLE, ORACLES AND (SOCIO)RHETORICAL GOSPEL CRITICISM

[Joe Parrish]

Journal for the Study of the New Testament 80 (2000) 

[JSNT 80 (2000) 44-65] 

'SALTED WITH FIRE' (MARK 9.42-50): STYLE, ORACLES AND (SOCIO)RHETORICAL GOSPEL CRITICISM 

Ian H. Henderson 

McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 2A7 

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Excerpt from Pages 62-64

I am not quite saying that Mk 9 42-50 is form-critically a curse text Our passage has no distinctive formulae of cursing, nor does the immediate Markan narrative context impose the designation Elsewhere Mark directly ascribes the rhetoric of cursing to Jesus, moreover, Mark implies an analogy between Jesus' verbal act of cursing and his prophetic gesture in the old Temple In Mark 11 (vv 12-14, 20-25) the cursing of the fig tree with fruitlessness frames the dramatic and portentous cleansing of the Temple I want to say that Mk 9 42-50 behaves rhetorically as a text in a similar way, inviting the question, Ts this law, or a curse7' and, if it is a curse, 'By what sacrifice, or by what ordeal may the spell be broken7' 

Formally, the text does invite special processing of some kind by its marked stylistic difference from the surrounding narrative and chreia materials Even apart from the catchwords 'stumbling', 'fire', and 'salt', the passage is marked as something like verse by the sheer density of syntactical and lexical repetition,^ a statistical stylometnc analysis would show Mk 9 42-50 to be one of the most self-involved speeches in early Christian literature 

In particular we should note the repetition of 'gehenna', a word which, as I said, Mark has to gloss as 'unquenchable fire "where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched" ' (Isa 66 24) Code-switching into non-Greek, especially in Mark, is often motivated by a semi-magical sense of the evocative and performative power of Jesus' 

Press 1996) ? A Morland The Rhetoric of Curse in Galatians (Emory Studies in Early Christianity Atlanta Scholars Press 1995) 

33 IH Henderson Gnomic Quatrains in the Synoptics An Experiment in Genre Definition NTS 37 (1991) pp 481 98 (487 90) see Fleddermann Discipleship Discourse pp 67 73 

speech.34 Something, moreover, of the same aura of supernatural authority attaches to the unmarked echo of Isaiah's last oracle. These poetic effects have therefore a rhetorical function, that of emphasizing the ceremonial and authoritative qualities of Jesus' words. They derive their persuasive force, such as it is, from the fact that they are Jesus' incantation, rather than from their evident rationale. 

I want to say, then, that the Gospel writer expected, a bit optimistically, that his audience would hear 9.42-50 as an oracular curse on leaders-in-waiting, binding them by magic as well as by arguments to a sacrificial model of ministry. Jesus' last mortal words in Galilee, addressed to his closest disciples, might be expected to have the ritual force of a blessing or its opposite. In rather the same way Gen. 49.5-7 has Jacob curse his violent son Levi to landlessness, a curse which also implies the blessing of Levi's ordination to the priesthood (cf. Num. 18.6-7, 20; Deut. 33; Exod. 32.25-29). Like Jacob in Genesis 49, Jesus in Mark 9 is on the threshold of his own death, the archetypal liminal moment for blessing and cursing and oracular speech. Also like Jacob, Jesus is effectively ordaining those whom he curses with leadership in the covenant community. 

To read Mk 9.42-50 as a puzzlingly incoherent piece of instruction or argumentation is a reductive misperception, a misperception which Matthew and Luke, Mark's best- and earliest-known readers, shared. The reception history of Mark's Gospel, and of this passage particularly, is best explained by the assumption that Mark made unrealistic demands on the rhetorical competence of his book's projected audience. Specifically, the Gospel writer expected Jesus' argumentation at this important juncture to work rhetorically against destructive church leadership, a central pragmatic concern of his whole book. He expected Jesus' gruesome speech to work not because it made sense, though there is sense in it. He expected the text to work because in it Jesus was placing the ambitious among Mark's readers under a special threat of punitive fire or penitential mutilation. 

Let us go back to the rabbinic question, whether mutilation is a legal sentence or a curse. There is a strong presumption against regarding self-sacrificial mutilation in Mark-or in early Christianity-as only a metaphorical demand or as a universal ethical demand. On the other hand, hanging millstones around unfortunate necks and chopping off 

offensive limbs is not unambiguously treated in Mark 9 as legal prescription, as obligatory sentences to be carried out casuistically by the community. In fact, normative ambiguity is an essential factor in the rhetorical force of Mk 9.42-50: the vivid indeterminacy of the threat makes it persuasive. 

Read communally, the remedy of amputation does have a legal character; it sentences impenitent and divisive leaders to excommunication. Read personally, however, the passage anticipates that leaders like Mark's Satanic Peter (8.34) or John and his brother (10.35-45) may by self-sacrifice avoid 'gehenna', even after stumbling. Mark's readers hear Jesus tell his chosen disciples 'you will all be caused to stumble' (14.27), but Mark's readers also know that, beyond the story, some at least will be rehabilitated by post-Easter vision (16.7) and finally validated by post-Easter self-sacrifice (10.35-40). In the world of Mark's readers, Peter in particular literally exemplified both ways, punitive and sacrificial, of being salted with fire: dysfunctional in Mark's story, controversial in at least Paul's post-Easter eyes, finally triumphant in martyrdom. 

I understand Mk 9.42-50 as specifically directed to potential leaders of the 'little believers'. In it Mark's Jesus adjures these potential leaders by placing them under a curse of office, that they maintain peace with one another for the sake of those under their influence and authority. 

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